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A note to the next generation.

November 27, 2015 //

I had a brief chat with my son this evening. He told me that there was some kind of initiative going on where kids were going to learn politics as part of their final year exams. At first I thought it was a dumb idea. Surely, kids could learn about that by picking up a newspaper or watching the news on TV?

But when I thought about it some more, I changed my mind. And it’s not just because of the obvious question: I mean, what kid reads newspapers or watches TV news these days?

Here’s the real problem: our generation and the generation before us have made a complete balls of looking after the world. We have all these really serious issues, like climate change, poverty, inequality, radicalisation, racism, sexism, terrorism, access to medicines and drinking water, overuse of antibiotics, biodiversity decline and ocean acidification, to name but a few. Huge problems. And who have we chosen to solve these problems for us? In the main, a bunch of space cadets.

Our generations, when given a chance, have blown it, choosing instead to elect populist dickheads again and again and again and yet again. Instead of electing someone who might know a thing or two about managing complex problems, we’ve gone repeatedly for the political equivalent of the drug pusher. Yeah man, Pop this Pill and All your Worries will be Gone. The Problem is Not You; It’s Them.

I despair for the future if our kids grow up with no interest in politics, because we’ve left their generation in the invidious position of having to clean up after us. They are the ones who’ll be left with no fish in the seas. They are the people who’ll need to deal with all the carbon dioxide in the air and the oceans. They are the ones who will need to tackle youth unemployment and unrest and desperate social inequality. And all because the incompetents we elected did precisely nothing about it when they had the chance to. In fact, they did worse than nothing: they made these bad situations even more abysmal than they were.

If the next generation grow up in our footsteps, apathetic about the world they live in, they won’t even have the language to tackle the problems we’ve left them with. Instead, if they vote at all, they’ll be left voting for blowhards in the footsteps of Berlusconi and Trump, only because nobody in their right minds would enter politics in a fit. Imagine this: George W Bush is now considered by many commentators to be a moderate. A moderate. My god.

I have one caveat about giving the next generation a sense of political awareness. If they ever realise what our lot did on our watch, they’ll immediately have us all locked up. But then again, it’s nothing more than we deserve.

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Categories opinions, politics

Placebo Solutions for a Real War

November 21, 2015 //

Let me just say something straight out. ISIS/Daesh are a gang of murderous, vicious thugs. They are part of a network of religious cults that would put the Moonies, Scientology and Jim Jones in the shade. Their poisonous ideology is reminiscent of the Blut und Stahl mindset of Nazi Germany, where ideology overrode basic humanity, allowing all manner of atrocities to occur. It’s the worst, most hermetically sealed, conspiracy laden, violent, misogynistic, racist, anti-human worldview of our time. ISIS/Daesh must be defeated.

The question is, how to defeat them.

There appears to be a small number of widely-held views, depending on which side of the political spectrum you lie on, that I call “placebo solutions”. The aim seems to be to address the feelings of those who espouse them, without actually dealing with the real problem.

On the political right, you have the “they are all the same” placebo solution. Under this idea, all Muslims are considered to be potential (or actual) terrorists, particularly the hapless refugees who have left their homes in Syria and Iraq in search of an uncertain future in foreign states. Right wingers want them scrutinised, vetted, isolated and thrown back to their own countries. In those lands, they want to bomb them into oblivion. All this in spite of overwhelming evidence that most Muslims and refugees are peace-loving ordinary people. Irish people should be well familiar with this mindset, given how we were viewed with suspicion during the murderous IRA campaigns of the 1970s and 80s.

Not only are these just salves for right-wing anger, they have the side-effect of further marginalising Muslims and pushing unemployed youths into the arms of the terrorists. It also creates local, reactionary terrorism – vigilante gangs whose lack of forethought is matched by their violence.

On the political left, you have the view that this terrorism is solely the creation of the West and that military action is never appropriate. the more conspiratorially minded would suggest that ISIS/Daesh is a creation of the West. That, instead of going to war against ISIS/Daesh, we need to understand the causes, maybe even pander to their views as if they had an equal place at the ideological table. This is to discount the fact that Salafism is a pretty hard-boiled system of thought at this stage. It is far more than a response to victimisation. The main focus of ISIS/Daesh wrath has not really been Westerners, but other Muslim sects and local groups, such as Yazidis and Kurds, with no record of imperialism and domination. In fact, local civilians have been, by far, the greatest victims of their outrages, thus the refugee crisis.

When threatened with war, countries have no choice but to use whatever means are at their disposal to protect their citizens and those who call their country home. War is an abomination, but what do you do when confronted by war from others? There is always a fine line to be tread between civil liberties and protection and in a peaceful society it should always veer towards personal liberty. But in times of war and evidence of real danger from an enemy force? What then? Just stand by and hold out flowers to them?

 

Placebo responses only help to sate pre-existing views. They do nothing to solve the problem. What we need are cool heads, better intelligence sharing, and intense co-ordination between multiple states. Strategies are needed to identify the ringleaders, destroy their ability to function and, ultimately, eliminate them. If ISIS/Daesh want to play war, then, for certain, our war professionals – generals and military experts – are more adept, more strategic, more networked and better resourced than any rag-tag bunch of terrorists could ever be. In situations such as what we are seeing, we need to let them get on with their jobs with a minimum of political interference.

Ultimately, the crucial objective is not really the elimination of ISIS/Daesh, although this is a necessary pre-condition. It’s the rebuilding afterwords and the creation of a long lasting peace that will allow people to return to their homelands. Hospitals, homes, schools, electricity, water – the basic services of life. Remove the threat, then rebuild. This is the big challenge for the civilised world if the peace is to be permanent.

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Categories opinions, politics

There is a difference between Science and Religion, but…

November 3, 2015 //

There is a difference between Science and Religion.

Science needs evidence. Science embraces evidence. If the evidence tells you something that conflicts with your beliefs, then in science, the evidence wins. It must win, because that’s how progress happens in science. Scientists follow the evidence, irrespective of how uncomfortable that might mean towards their beliefs.

Religion needs belief. Religion embraces belief. If the evidence tells you something that conflicts your beliefs, then in religion, the belief wins. It must win, because that’s the way religion preserves itself, often passing down the generations. Religious adherents follow the belief, irrespective of whether evidence exists to support those beliefs or even if if it refutes those beliefs completely.

If you are a scientist, and the evidence starts to conflict with your beliefs, but you hold fast to those beliefs despite strong evidence to the contrary, you are no longer practicing science. You are practicing religion.

If you are a religious adherent, and the evidence starts to conflict with your beliefs, so you change your beliefs to come in line with the evidence, you are no longer practicing religion. You are practicing science.

There is a difference between Science and Religion and this difference is unreconcilable. A wide, yawning, unbridgeable gap. You either accept that evidence has primacy, or that belief does. You can’t have both. Efforts to reconcile the two are unlikely to be very productive.

There is a difference between Science and Religion, but perhaps the issue is somewhat moot. The real question is what difference this makes to most of us. The problem is our brains, you see. Our brains have an interesting relationship with ideas, both scientific and religious. In our brains these things tend to get mashed together, confused with each other. Our brains can accommodate conflicting ideas. While science and religion are different, when it comes to scientific people and religious people, the distinction is far more blurry.

Most people don’t think about religion or science all the time. Most people spend their time thinking about other things. Whether they left the heating on, the pain in their foot, the hallway that needs a paint job, the local team losing last Saturday. Most people have friends to talk to, families to care for, work to do. Muslim, atheist, Christian, secular, Buddhist: when it comes to life and everyday concerns, we become less different. We become more human. The gulf can be traversed. It’s no longer black and white. It’s complicated.

There is a difference between Science and Religion, but our humanity keeps getting in the way. 

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Categories opinions, speculations, stuff, Uncategorized

Major setbacks: How do atheists cope?

October 30, 2015 //

Years ago, when I was religious, I found it difficult to imagine how I could cope with adversity if I didn’t have a strong belief in God. I felt that my religious faith was the key ingredient that helped me through in times of trouble. A quick prayer and the feeling that I was being looked over by a loving deity gave me great comfort.

I’m sure many religious people believe that it’s all very well for atheists to hold their views in good times, but just wait until bad times hit. There are no atheists in foxholes, as they say. The reality, however, is that most of us can get through quite terrible setbacks without relapsing into religious belief.

I’ve had a few big setbacks since I lost my religion all those years ago. Some of them have been pretty tough. I had plenty of dark times as I negotiated my way through them. But not once did I have recourse to prayer. No matter how bad things got, I never felt like trying to rekindle my religious beliefs. Honestly, I would have immediately thought it pointless and silly. It simply wasn’t an option.

But nevertheless, I got through these times and lived to fight another day. So how did I manage? Looking back, here are a few pointers.

I tried to be kind to myself. Bad things usually happen, not because you’re a bad person or that you need to be punished, but because such is life. People get old, or find themselves in the wrong places, or make mistakes they couldn’t possibly have foreseen at the time. Realising this made me feel less angry with myself. Guilt was one burden I didn’t have to bear.

I gave myself time. I tried not to expect that all the bad thoughts would go away permanently just by thinking a certain way, or doing something transient. The feelings come back no matter what you do. Realising this helped to reduce the urgency of needing to have solutions for everything. Some things in life don’t have easy answers. As they say, if you can’t overcome it, you can often outlive it.

I tried to live in the present. Realising that bad feelings pass, given enough time, allowed me to better allow the worst issues to roll over me. You roll with the waves.

I tried to acknowledge the pain and feelings I was experiencing. They were real to me, why fight hard against them? If I felt like crying, I would cry. If I didn’t feel like doing something, I left it go until I felt a bit better about it. You have good days and bad days. It’s not about surrendering, as much it is about giving yourself some time.

I tried to get on with life, getting back to the things I liked doing and to the work routine I was used to. It was difficult at times, but it allowed my mind to think about other things. I feel that brooding about the past too much is the mental equivalent of scratching a scab. It can prolong the pain and I’m not sure if that’s particularly healthy.

I sought out and appreciated the company of friends and family members. Just talking about things and the kindness they showed helped me so much. I appreciate that this is not something everyone can do, but it helped me. Even pets can be such great companions. They don’t think much about the future and they get on just fine. Maybe, during these times, neither should we.

I sought out professional help. A chat with a doctor or a counsellor helped me through the more difficult periods. Assistance like this has a big place in overcoming the most painful feelings.

Would my experience have been shorter or less painful had I kept my religious faith? It’s difficult to know, but I suspect there is little difference. There was no sense of help from a loving god as I went through it, but neither were there any feelings of despair or guilt that the same god wasn’t bothering to help.

Religious believers often thank their god for getting them through the dark times. But I think they are missing something. The truth might be that their success is only theirs to celebrate.

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Categories opinions

Fiona O’Leary and The Autism Wars

October 19, 2015 //

Fiona O'LearyWe were delighted to host Fiona O’Leary last Friday in Blackrock Castle. Fiona is a prominent campaigner on the issue of childhood autism. Over the past few years, she has proven to be a thorn in the side of groups who profess to be able to ‘cure’ the condition. She has been the major force behind a number of exposés and media investigations across Europe and the US, resulting in the closing down of lucrative illegal operations selling highly dangerous medications to the parents of autistic children. Fiona is tireless in her energy, passion and dedication. She attributes this to her own experience on the autistic spectrum – almost unable to anything in half measures.

Fiona gave a great talk – lucid, wide-ranging and often shocking. She gave us an insight into the activities of organisations such as the Genesis II Church, who claim that industrial bleach can cure Autism, or David Noakes, who sells a blood based product called GCMaF to parents of autistic kids. These people have been helped in Ireland by health-care professionals, some of which are likely to get debarred as a result of Fiona’s work.

Rather than recap the talk in its entirety, here are some of my take-aways.

Autism is not a disease. Talking about it as if it were a “disease” that can be “cured” is misleading and insulting towards people with autism and their families. Unfortunately, there is a view out there that a cure exists, but big pharma or the medical establishment are actively working to suppress it from the public. The groups selling magic potions such as GCMaF or MMS seem to see themselves as plucky counter-revolutionaries who are in a fight with the establishment to get the truth out. It’s a very seductive narrative, but it doesn’t quite cover the fact that their purported remedies are both useless and dangerous. They are also in the business of selling false hope to vulnerable families.

Autism is not the fault of the parents. Some observers, harking back to the “refigerator parent” hypothesis, appear to prefer a narrative that kids who manifest autistic characteristics, do so because of a lack of affection in their earlier years. This hypothesis has long been debunked, yet prominent commentators still prefer nurture to nature.

The treatment of autism in some countries lags far behind international best practice. France, in particular, has been called out repeatedly for inhumane treatment of autistic kids. At the talk on Friday night was a family who fled the country in order to protect their autistic son. The people of France will have some considerable accounting to do in the years to come.

Autism is not a recent phenomenon. The huge rise in the incidence of autism diagnoses worldwide is mainly explicable through better detection and reporting over the past 30 years. Before movies such as Rainman raised the condition to public consciousness in the 1980’s, it was often misdiagnosed as a psychiatric illness for which institutionalisation seemed to be the only ready answer. If there are silver linings to this story, it is that autistic people are no longer confined to the shadows, no longer considered to be a source of shame to their parents.

Vaccines do not cause autism. Multiple scientific studies have now confirmed that there is no link between the two. However, well organised groups – a sizeable percentage of the autism advocacy community – dismiss the evidence, preferring instead to yell “conspiracy”.

Autism needs to be considered a part of the diverse human spectrum. This, ultimately, is what Fiona’s message was all about. Just like sexual preference, skin colour, eye shape, curly hair and male pattern baldness, it’s part of who we are and what makes us different. It can be debilitating and exhausting but the answer does not lie in paradigms that talk about cures and blame. Funding and support is required to enhance the lives of autistic people, so they can live happy, worthwhile lives.

There is a war going on within the autism world. The autism advocacy world is marred by infighting, verbal abuse, threats and character assassination. A huge section of the movement has embraced conspiracism over evidence, logic and critical thinking. The only weapons in their arsenal are emotion, anecdotes and bullying. In doing so, they are convincing none of the people who actually matter. Governments, philanthropists, foundations, trusts, charities and other non-governmental donors, who prefer well reasoned and well researched cases, are receiving mixed messages from advocacy groups. They may well be persuaded in the end to invest their resources elsewhere. How much progress has been wasted while autism advocacy fights itself to a stand-still over vaccines and big pharma suspicions and damaging concoctions such as MMS? There is a need, I think, for campaigners to work together and explore common ground, even if they have disagreements on certain issues. . Critically, they need to engage positively with the scientific community. It’s a Herculean task, akin to squaring the circle, but I don’t see an easy alternative. Until the advocates start basing their campaigns on the science, many kids and their families will not get the quality of life they deserve.

I want to thank Fiona and Tim. It must seem that they are fighting against the tide at times, such is the vitriol directed against her and her family. But it’s a worthwhile cause. The sidelining of the fanatics and the creation of space for more reasonable engagement is an important step in giving these families the support they need.

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Categories opinions

Ten Reasons Why I’m not Sentimental about The Past

August 2, 2015 //
cc licensed Burns College, Boston College.

cc licensed Burns College, Boston College.

Often enough, both in real life and social media, I come across people who lament the past. “Ah, we were much more free back then, we could do as we wanted, and weren’t we all so happy”. This kinds of “och ochon” sentiment makes me want to puke. I’m not doubting that they had mostly happy childhoods, but implicit in their writing is that current kids cannot possibly be as happy as they were back then. To which I call bullshit. The only thing they are demonstrating are the massive defects in their memories. So here are just a few things that are much better now in Ireland than back then.

The Litter

It might be hard to believe, but Ireland was a much filthier place in the 70’s and 80’s. The plastic bag levy had not yet been imposed, so we used to hang them on any available tree. It was a long time before businesspeople took action to name and shame town councils and villages into making even half an effort. There was no such thing as separating rubbish – everything went to landfill. I remember finding a dead calf in the ditch on the way home from school once. We are still a filthy nation, as David Norris recently said, but relative to decades past, there are signs of hope.

The Corporal Punishment

Until 1981, teachers could belt kids with fists, sticks and leather straps if they got out of line. The only psychological diagnosis for kids who stepped out of line was that they were “bold” and the only remedy on offer by the teachers was 6 of the best in front of the class. Slapping kids was a great way for teachers to release their endorphins, but fuck-all use besides this. It didn’t make classes more disciplined (they weren’t) and it didn’t stop us being extraordinarily cruel toward classmates when the teacher’s eyes were looking elsewhere – leading by example and all that.

The Roads

Road journeys were a nightmare when I was a kid. Apart from the Naas Dual Carriage Way, no roads in Ireland even came close to being adequate. Hardly any town had a bypass, so the road trips were a continuous succession of bottlenecks and queues, exacerbated by the atrocious parking in every small town you passed through. And Ireland was pothole central – full of gaping voids into which cars might disappear forever. We think nothing of a 2 and a half hour trip from Cork to Dublin. Not long ago that would have been the stuff of science fiction.

Sunburn

The day after a sunny day in Ireland, intense pain would grip the nation. The whole country was filled with people with tomato red faces, necks, arms and that soft bit behind your knees. A few days later and we were all peeling like snakes. Misguided by the notion that a sunburn would “set the foundations of a good tan”, we would strip off and let the UV go to work on our skin cells. It’s not that sunscreen didn’t exist. It did, but nobody really saw the point of it. Better to dab on that useless aftersun lotion later on, in a vain attempt to ease the agony.

The Cars

Ireland only introduced a National Car Test in the 1990’s. Before that, our roads were full of the most ancient, crapped out bangers you could possibly imagine, all contributing to those nightmare road trips. Seat belts were either absent or optional, and most kids spent their journeys lying on the flat area beneath the back window of the car, or sitting on their mammy’s lap in the front passenger seat. And it’s not like people didn’t pay badly for this fecklessness. 600 people used to die on Irish roads each year during the 1970’s – over 3 times as many as now. Those who lament the freedom were not the victims of this carnage. They were just lucky.

The Radio and The Telly

When I was a kid, we had just one radio station – Radio Eireann. It was talk radio with a good daubing of religion, sport and traditional Irish music. The full Catholic Mass was a mainline program on the radio every Sunday morning. TV was not much better. Radio Luxembourg and pirate radio stations were wild, lawless and frowned upon. Younger people only got their first music radio station in 1979, a full two decades after rock and roll kicked off in America and Britain.

The Racism

We all looked the same too. Everywhere you looked, it was the same pasty faced (and occasionally sunburned) people in every town, in every locality. If you looked different, it’s likely you would have been stared as you walked down any street in Ireland. Casual racism tripped off the tongue and people wouldn’t bat an eyelid. Sure they were all grand, but you wouldn’t want one living next to you. Of course we were all into the black babies god love them, but it was far from an egalitarian view – underlying it was a sense that they weren’t able to cope as well as the rest of us.

The Troubles

Like a constant drumbeat, the news from “The North” used to keep us in an almost permanent state of depression. Every day there was some interjection of hatred, some killing and bombing, some fucking godawful atrocity, to remind us that we Irish were a screwed up lot. True, “The South” was a quieter place, but there was a sense that this was a particularly Irish problem, with our religious differences and our 17th Century animosities, still boiling away like a volcanic rupture that could never be healed. And you dare not say anything about the IRA, lest the word got around. Of all the shit things about growing up in Ireland, this was among the worst.

The Clergy and the clericalism

What more needs to be said? Princes and privilege and power and that total arrogance that enabled every single thing to be swept under the carpet until it all came vomiting out in the 1990’s and 2000’s. Awful, awful, awful. And what’s worse, is they still haven’t yet grasped the lessons to be learned from it. Some of them still think they are kings of the hill.

The Inferiority

Though Ireland was technically part of the First World, there was a sense where we knew this couldn’t possibly be true. While many European countries had got their shit together, we were still rummaging around, looking for it like it was gold bullion. There was no money for anything, we had a particular breed of clientelist politician, the weather was awful and anyone with a bit of get-up-and-go had got-up-and-gone. Gay Byrne once famously said that we should contact the Queen of England to ask her to take the country back, while apologising for the state we had left it in. A lot of people would have nodded their heads about this.

So, you know, it’s better now. Not at all perfect, but better. Kids have more choices and more opportunities to engage with people who are different to them. They are safer. They don’t have to live through that atmosphere of barely comprehendible hatred that we all just took for granted. They don’t need to feel they are lesser beings than anyone else. Despite all it’s faults, I prefer the Ireland of today. I really do.

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Categories opinions

I really want Chris Froome to be clean

July 25, 2015 //

Barring a major incident, Chris Froome is now safely on course for a second Tour de France win this weekend. Apart from his extraordinary performance on the first day of the Pyrenees, he has played an intelligent long-game, keeping a close eye on his greatest rivals while handing the daily glory to an array of less threatening competitors. The only chink in his armour came yesterday, when Nairo Quintana finally escaped his clutches on the last mountain climb, chopping 30 seconds off his 3 minute winning margin.

If only he could confine his challenges to the fearsome courses and competitors. Froome has been subjected to quite intense media speculation and rumour over the past few days. He has been spat at, had urine thrown at him and is regularly the subject of obscene gestures from spectators on the roadside. Throughout the tour, and particularly since his Stage 10 win, he has had to defend himself against those who believe he is winning, not by effort alone, but with the help of performance enhancing drugs such as EPO.

I am of the camp that believes that Froome is innocent of these charges. Without a doubt, cycling has been tainted enormously by the scandals of the past 17 years. It is therefore reasonable to ask if something untoward is happening when a rider puts in a huge performance nowadays. However I think that on the whole, the sport is much cleaner than it used to be, particularly for the top General Classification contenders.

The pressure to clean up the sport has never been stronger. The sport needs money and nothing scares off sponsors more quickly than allegations of drug taking. Sky, a company in an industry where perception is everything, would have a hard time explaining how much they knew, or were aware of, should a major drug scandal erupt within their team. Furthermore, given Team Sky’s publicly stated views on doping, they would be exposed as dreadful hypocrites should the reality belie their words.

Official testing has improved greatly in the last few years. The standards are more stringent, the testing processes more robust and unannounced tests are common in order to catch the cheats. There are also serious repercussions for competitors who miss a drugs test. Not perfect perhaps, but at least they place a determined cheat under greater pressure not to be caught napping.

More importantly, there are the many other ways the story could get out. A GC competitor has more than just officials to worry about. The cycling press are a hardy lot, and as the Lance Armstrong story demonstrated, unlikely to be fazed even when extreme intimidation is applied. If they hear a sniff of a scandal, they won’t easily be diverted from uncovering the truth. So far, they have remained relatively quiet on the subject of Froome. If anything, it’s a sign of health.

Cyclists also need to be on the guard for other cyclists, both competitors and team mates. Although cycling is a team sport, it is also fiercely individualistic and competitive. Game theory applies. While there are alliances, there are plenty of incentives and opportunities for defections. Cyclists change teams all the time. Enmities between competitors are poorly concealed and even within teams, riders can’t fully trust other cyclists. The incident where Rafal Majka’s communications “stopped working” at a crucial point in Stage 17, thus depriving Alberto Contador of much needed support, doesn’t lend itself to impeccable trust between team mates.

Within this atmosphere of regulation, suspicion and media scrutiny, I also wonder how some of the top players might view their legacy. Do they want their record to stand among the greats of cycling, or their names to be uttered in the same sentences as Armstrong and Virenque, particularly when the possibility of being caught out as a top-tier rider is enormously high? Surely the risks are now too great?

It’s possible I am wrong, and in that case I will gladly accept, once again, that I have put far too much faith in human nature. In the meantime, I remain on the sidelines, urging Froome on and wishing him the very best as he races down the Champs Elysées on Sunday.

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Categories opinions

Ignore the scaremongers: get your children vaccinated

July 3, 2015 //
Source: vaccine.gov

Source: vaccine.gov

A BBC news report today reported that a woman in the US died from an attack of the measles. While the measles does not normally kill, a small percentage of people who get it can die; others will be left with serious health problems for the rest of their lives. If you are a rational person, measles is not something that you and your children should ever have to deal with.

Measles is one of the three diseases, along with Mumps and Rubella, that the MMR vaccine is effective in preventing. Vaccines like MMR act by priming the immune system with a weakened version of the virus. This allows your body to create antibodies, so that when the real disease comes around, the body is ready to defend itself. The mechanics of how vaccination works is not new: it was pretty much understood by the 1940s, and as the graph above shows, it has proven itself over and over again to be highly effective against the types of diseases that destroyed the lives of so many people throughout history.

The woman who died was immunocompromised, which means she was unable to take any vaccines because of a health condition. Small babies and people like this woman depend on vaccinated people to stay free from these diseases.

The choice to remain unvaccinated is therefore not a simple personal choice. If you or your children do not take vaccines, you put people such as this woman at greater risk of being exposed to the measles. While measles might be unpleasant for you, you could be directly harming their lives. This goes beyond personal choice. It makes you a menace to public health. Expect lawsuits to arise in this case against the people who put this woman’s life at risk by not vaccinating. If they had been more responsible, she would be alive today.

You will see a lot of websites, alternative practitioners and some celebrities preaching the benefits of not taking vaccinations. They are wrong. The studies they use to support their beliefs are poorly thought out, incomplete, and in a few high profile cases: fraudulent. They have confused the idea of personal choice with what is good for society at large. They condemn “big pharma” and the “sickness industry” while forgetting that executives and employees of these organisations get sick too. They talk about poisons while conveniently forgetting that almost everything is a poison – it’s the dosage that matters. They cherrypick from anecdotal information and they exaggerate the dangers in order to frighten parents of small children. Not one major medical organisation agrees with them. Not one. They are manifestly wrong and they are putting lives at risk.

Ultimately, vaccines are a lot safer than the diseases they prevent. Less than a hundred years ago, people used to die, routinely, from smallpox, tuberculosis, bubonic plague, cholera, polio, tetanus and diphteria to mention just a few. Nowadays nobody does, or at least they shouldn’t. The reason is vaccines. While there can be side-effects to taking vaccines, they are usually minor and transient.

If I could recommend one link to take a look at, it’s this one: it shows clearly the difference that vaccines made when they were introduced. The evidence could not be clearer than this.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Source: Wall Street Journal

The bottom line: if you are scared by all the scare stories out there, talk to your doctor. Vaccines are safe, effective and help save lives; not just yours, but others who need vaccinated people like you to keep them alive.

Other resources:

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Categories opinions, scepticism

It’s more important to be a humanist

June 21, 2015 //

Up to the time I was 21, I was very religious. I never missed Sunday Mass, contemplated the priesthood once or twice, and I tried to live my life according to the words of Jesus. I believed, fervently, in the power of prayer. Then, in what seemed like an instant, it all came apart. Suddenly, it didn’t seem so rational that our souls went somewhere else when we died. The idea of a God of the Universe caring much about the goings on of some obscure species on an obscure planet now seemed rather bizarre. And then there was the problem of suffering and why a loving, all powerful god would permit evil to happen in the first place. My worldview changed overnight, but I have never looked back.

I had an agnostic phase, then an atheist phase, but nowadays, I think of myself as humanist. I am still an atheist, but this word is an inadequate description of who I am. My atheism informs how I look at religion, but that’s about it. I self-describe as a skeptic, but this also is only part of who I am. It has made me appreciate the value of science and evidence and I see it as a useful tool, helping to evaluate the claims people make. I am a secularist in that I believe a secular state, that is indifferent to religion, is better for everyone, religious and non-religious alike. I am agnostic in that there is much I don’t know, yet I am not willing to accept that just because I’d like something to be true, it therefore must be so.

Humanism is something more. It informs how I feel about things. It brings in important values such as compassion, integrity, honesty and friendship. It says something very profound to me. That I am here for a short time, and while I cannot personally change many things, there are people around me who affect me and whom I affect in turn. That there is a world here that should be respected, as it is our only home in this Universe. That our enthusiasms and loves and hobbies and friendships are something to be cherished. That others may not be so lucky and that we should strive to make life better for everyone, not just a fortunate few. That education and healthcare and control over our bodies and freedom from oppression should be our birthrights.

These are universal aspirations that are shared by many, non-religious and religious people alike. Some people base this common understanding on their theology. I arrive at it because I realise that life is short, and the people around me are important and deserving of respect and compassion.

I often think I have not changed much from the time I was religious, but humanism has opened my eyes to others and their differences. When I was growing up, “Protestant” meant “them”, “Catholic” meant “us”. Being “Irish” was different to being “English”, as was “American” or “Nigerian”. “White” and “black” and “asian” all carried different meanings – not always benign. Sexuality was spoken about in hushed tones. Similar distinctions could be made regarding disability and mental illness. Humanism has helped to blur these distinctions. It’s more important that we relate to people, not because they are Christians or Irish or Americans, but because they are humans like ourselves. Likewise it’s important to acknowledge differences, but to realise that siblings from the same family are often more different than two people from different backgrounds and different continents who happen to meet, have a laugh, and fall in love with each other.

As a humanist, the greatest distinction I make is between people who want these things, and those who want the old orders to prevail. I am not sympathetic to those who advocate for theocracy, the exclusion of women or the suppression of sexuality along narrow lines. I oppose those who believe the world is to be exploited with little thought for long term consequences. I am appalled by traditions of mutilation and ostracisation that still prevail, despite the misery they wreak. People who put their ideologies ahead of universal education are a danger to us all, no matter how well meaning those ideologies are. Our shared humanity should always trump the thoughts that are in peoples’ heads. It’s people that are important – not their beliefs.

On World Humanist Day, I’m celebrating my humanism and the amazing fact that I can share a tiny sliver of time on this planet existing with other wonderful and fascinating creatures, some of whom also happen to be humans. I long for a day when this sense of belonging, humility and cooperation is shared by all the governments of this world. Unfortunately we have a long way to go.

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Why I am voting Yes.

May 12, 2015 //

It all comes down to this. Do I want to live in a country that is accepting of people at a fundamental level, or would I prefer a place that is happy to continue a historical tradition of intolerance for those people who don’t quite fit?

For decades, Ireland was a country blemished by unhealthy attitudes towards those who couldn’t live up to standards that a comfortable majority had set for themselves. For those who did not conform, or could not do so, the realities of life were quite incredible. Wider society treated them with contempt – the orphaned, the unmarried mothers, the mentally ill, the sexual misfits – for them, our country was a barely more than a prison. Little wonder that many took the boat as soon as they had half a chance. Maybe it was the Famine that made us like this, or the Catholic Church, or the excessive nationalism of our country’s early years – whatever the reason, our recent history is obscured by shadows and skeletons.

This is not the Ireland I see around me today. Despite the trauma of our past, my gut tells me that we have grown as a nation. I like to think that our country has gone a long way to accept difference, whether that be religious, cultural, national, mental, racial or sexual. There is much humour, much love and much intelligence in our culture. We aspire to a fairer society that treats everyone as equals. Maybe I’m wrong, but I have a sense that I should be proud of this little nation. Hopefully, this impression can be copper-fastened on May 22nd.

If the country votes Yes, we will be the first country on the planet to give gay people the right to marry by popular mandate. It will send a message to the world that is much wider than the issue at hand. It will tell everyone that we really are a nation of a hundred thousand welcomes, and that’s no bad thing.

In opposition to this notion are people whose idea of a future Ireland is also much wider than the issue at hand. To them, extending marriage to gay people is just one more step in the secularisation of Irish society. Sure, they use fancy words and nuanced rhetoric, but I remember well the divorce and abortion referendums of the 1980’s and 1990’s, and I can tell you that their approach is always the same. It’s all just a big smokescreen, designed primarily to inject fear and suspicion into middle Ireland. It’s progress they are against and they will fight with tooth and nail every attempt to introduce positive changes to our society. Why else would they mount such implacable opposition to a legal change that will affect such a small number of people in our country?

I want Ireland to be open, accepting society that embraces change and difference. A positive outcome will be a massive step along the way. I am voting Yes.

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